There's been a few comments recently about checking whether all the
various options work together, and I realise such would be an enormous
task. However, I'd like to voice my thoughts on the matter...
As I understand it, the basic idea is that the kernel should compile
without error independant of the choice of configuration options
specified. Clearly, at the moment, this is not the case, or there
wouldn't be the level of traffic reporting problems that is seen on
this and other mailing lists...
However, as I see it, a selection of just THREE of the many
combinations of options should detect MOST of the problems that
prevent the kernel from compiling. These may not produce useful
kernels, but they would be useful as test cases because of this
property.
The three combinations I refer to are as follows:
1. NO options enabled. This deals with the basic kernel produced
when options are not selected.
2. ALL options selected and hard compiled in. This deals with
the compatibility between various options, ensuring that they
will all work together. The kernel produced can be regarded
as the ultimate in "Kitchen-Sink" kernels, thus making such
a kernel VERY useful...
As an addendum to this, it is not possible to select every
option with the current tree since two of the ISDN drivers
are incompatible with each other, and the 2.0.35 source tree
includes an error directive that's activated if both are
selected.
3. ALL options selected, and all that can be are selected as
modules. This deals with problems between modular and hard
compiled versions of options.
Incidentally, I've tried all three of the above on my system, using
the raw 2.0.35 source tree, and NONE of them compiled without an error
causing them to crash out.
Best wishes from Riley.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/